1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer application system for generating a working user interface, and more particularly, to a design tool that generates such from the entities, attributes and relationships of a data model.
2. Background Art
There are currently many programs that help data modelers create valid models of business areas. See, for example, Logic Works ERwin Methods Guide, a publication of Logic Works, Inc., 1060 Route 206, Princeton, N.J. 08540 (Logic Works ERwin is part of power builder series where ER means entity relationship and win means windows), and Application Development Workbench (ADW) of Knowledgeware. See ADW Planning Workstation Basics User Guide, a publication of Knowledgeware, 3340 Peachtree Road, N.E. Atlanta, Ga. 30326 (currently doing business as Sterling Software).
There are also many tools available to assist user interface designers generate user interfaces. See, for example, the graphical user interface (GUI) facilities as provided in Systems Applications and Products (SAP) in Data Processing, a product of SAP America Inc, Philadelphia, Pa., IBM VisualAge for SmallTalk, IBM VisualAge C++ for OS/2, Hockware's VisPro Rexx, and Borland's Object Vision 2.0. However, if the data modeller and the user interface designer are not working closely together, the resulting application will be lacking in either usability or data integrity.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a facility which enables a user to avoid having to learn many complicated syntaxes, by allowing the user to design a database system at a user friendly interface, such as a graphical user interface. Such a user need not be required to read and understand the underlying data model.
Products currently available for automatically generating a user interface do so only for entities and attributes, and relationships are not automatically created and checked. A further problem with current products and practices is that usually a data model is written first, then the user interface is defined without, often, updating the data model. There is, therefore, a need to assure that as the user interface is developed, the underlying data model is updated--and fixing one automatically fixes the other.
Consequently, it is an object of the invention to provide an interface design tool that takes the entities, attributes, and relationships, with cardinality and optionality on data models, and generates therefrom a working user interface characterized by usability and assured data integrity. It is a further object of the invention to provide an interface design tool that directly accesses the entity, attribute, relationship (EAR) data model and generates an appropriate user interface.